Surrounded
by a vast muddy bottom, a 20-square-mile jumble of rocks called
the Boulder Patch is an oasis of living sea life off Alaska's Arctic
coast. (Courtesy Brenda Konar, University of Alaska Fairbanks.)
Click on photo to see larger image.

Boulder Patch
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INTRO: While environmentalists work to keep Alaska's Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge off-limits to oil development, scientists are studying
another nearby natural wonder: This one an undersea oasis in the heart
of Prudhoe Bay's oil discoveries. Doug Schneider has more in this week's
Arctic Science Journeys Radio.

STORY: Of all the exotic places to go scuba diving, places like
the Caribbean, Tahiti or Hawaii perhaps come first to mind. Odds are,
Alaska's Arctic Ocean coast won't even be on your list. That's not surprising,
since much of the state's northern coast consists of, well, featureless,
almost lifeless, mud. Not exactly the sort of place you're likely to find
a Club Med. On a good day, the ocean here might be a bone-chilling 30
degrees Fahrenheit.

But let's not discount the place altogether. Twenty-five years ago, geologists looking for oil in Stefansson Sound came across a jumble of rocks and boulders and cobbles. Ken Dunton, a marine scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, was among the first people to lay eyes on what is now called the Boulder Patch.

First
discovered in 1978, the Boulder Patch sits in about 20 feet of water
in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay. (Courtesy Ken Dunton, University of Texas
at Austin) Click map to see larger image.

DUNTON: "The boulder patch I think is most appreciated if you've spent
day after day diving, like we did in 1978, on mud, being promised that
there was a big area of cobbles and boulders covered with luxuriant sea
life."

Global positioning systems hadn't yet been invented, so Dunton had to
dive every half a mile or so to look for the rumored formations.

DUNTON: "And on the eleventh dive we came upon these rocks and cobbles covered with a rich community of organisms. There are big boulders, large kelp, soft corals and sea anemones, and sponges and fish and colorful red and brown algae. You get pretty excited. It really is a beautiful location to dive in."

The oasis is as rare as it is beautiful. The rocks themselves are unlike
anything north of the Brooks Range. Minerals in the rocks more closely
resemble those found in Canada's McKenzie River area several hundred miles
to the east. Dunton says the Boulder Patch rocks most likely hitched a
ride on an advancing ice sheet some 10,000 years ago.

Today, these boulders lie in about 20 feet of water and are covered by sea ice nine months of the year. And yet, life thrives here. Plants and animals have evolved unique ways of surviving the dark, frigid water. Among the most fascinating: Dunton says one kelp species actually grows during the winter, without the help of the sun and photosynthesis.

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DUNTON: "They transport carbon that's been stored from the previous summer down to where cell division occurs at the base of the plant, and they use that to make new cell tissue. And so they are able to double in size. This allocation strategy is unique."

Click photo to see larger
image.

The Boulder Patch may be a place of hearty corals, kelp and sea anemones, but it isn't invulnerable. Surrounding it are America's largest oil and gas deposits. Nearby, Endicott Island, a man-made gravel pad, pumps thousands of barrels of oil each day from beneath the patch. And just ten miles away sits the main oil complex of Prudhoe Bay.

Not surprisingly, oil companies want to understand how the Boulder Patch
ecosystem works, and how it might repair itself if it were ever damaged,
either by natural forces like storms and icebergs, or a human mishap like
a barge running aground. To get answers, Brenda Konar and a team of research
scuba divers recently began a three-year study of the Boulder Patch. Konar
is a kelp forest ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks School
of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

KONAR: "If something were to happen to this community and all of the
organisms were to die, or most of the organisms were to die that are living
on the rocks, how long will it take for all these different algae and
invertebrates, corals and sponges to grow back?"

Researcher
Katrin Iken and technician Chris Wyatt chip corals and other marine
organisms off rocks taken from the Boulder Patch. The rocks will be
returned to the patch in a study to to learn how long it would take
for life in the Boulder Patch to recover if the area were damaged.
(Courtesy Brenda Konar, University of Alaska Fairbanks.)

This summer, Konar and her team collected some 70 rocks, each roughly
the size of a football. They took them to a warehouse on Endicott Island
and began the painstaking task of scraping, chipping and pounding off
the corals and other sea life. When the rocks are put back into the patch,
Konar will be able to monitor nature's progress as life returns to the
bare rocks. She also wants to learn if life returns significantly faster
to rocks protected from predators and grazers. To learn that, she put
several rocks into wire cages to keep them at bay.

Researcher
and diver Katrin Iken of the University of Alaska Fairbanks returns
a caged rock to the Boulder Patch. The cage keeps predators and plant-eaters
away from the rocks so researchers can see if their absence spurs
a quicker recovery. (Courtesy Brenda Konar, University of Alaska Fairbanks.)
Click photo to see larger image.

KONAR: "And then we want to take it one step further and see what effect
the grazers have. If we were take the grazers out, would things come in
differently? Would they come in faster?"

Given the cold water surrounding the boulder patch, animals and plants
here grow slowly but live a long time. Konar plans to return each summer
to check on the boulder's progress, but she says it might take all three
years of the study to see new growth. Still, it will be well worth the
wait. After all, it may not be Hawaii, but diving in the Arctic is just
as exotic.

Arctic Science Journeys is a radio service highlighting science,
culture, and the environment of the circumpolar north. Produced by the
Alaska Sea Grant College Program and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The shortcut to our ASJ news home page is www.asjnews.org.